Issues with working from home

[Awmum42]

With lots of jobs becoming wfh in the long term now with only a few days in the office if any. What’s stopping companies gradually moving more and more jobs overseas, why pay a U.K. wage to someone you rarely see when you could get the work done for cheaper rates overseas. It would seem to make sense and a worry for both of us.

What’s stopping companies gradually moving more and more jobs overseas

some will

some will try and realise the language and culture issues is causing more problems than it solves and move back (as it happened already)

many companies still need people in the office from time to time, so it won't make any difference. The saving on smaller premises etc will be more than enough.

@DianaT1969

Have you ever experienced BT's overseas customer service call centre OP? I use the words 'customer service' loosely. It should be studied in Business School as a lesson in how to lose customers.

Lol, isn't it just?

You can easily hang on for 30 mintues, then spend an hour or more on the phone, turning things on and off (even though you've already done that half a dozen times) and generally faffing about, and at the end of the call, they tell you "You have a problem with your internet".

The urge to shout "I fucking know I have a problem with my internet, that's why I fucking phoned you" is hard to resist.

It's always problem at our local telephone exchange, and once they've accepted that, it's usually sorted within the hour. Why we have to go through all the initial rigmarole beforehand beats me.

Having said that (and touching wood, while typing with the other hand) it's been much more reliable since lockdown. It's dropped a couple of times, but has always come back within a few minutes.

I work for a large UK company and we already outsource various functions to off shore teams but they dont involve any customer data so its limited. The entire company is now moving to default homeworking, but there is no intention to start outsourcing UK roles - as I understand there are complex tax rules about this - I'm not sure what they are - we've just been told we cant WFH in any second holidays homes abroad!

The biggest change we're seeing is that HR have removed any kind of London weighting from job adverts, and its opened up recruitment to other parts of the country which as a Midlands girl who commuted to London 3 days a week for the best part of 10 years, I more than welcome!

The labour market outside the UK didn't magically start existing just now. This hasn't become any more of a problem than it already was just because people are working from home.

I’ve wfh for 12 years as a project manager, department lead and line manager. I’m very well paid, have a drug development and clinical background and work with clients globally. I don’t see my role being offshored but I am looking at my EU team to see what work can be moved to more cost effective locations. However I don’t tie this specifically to home working. I might be expecting UK and other locations to work from a local office - I just want them to be cheaper!!

It absolutely depends on the role. But if I was used to a London salary in a role that has gone fully wfh I’d be concerned. Even where it’s not an official London weighting, most organisations find they need to pay more to get the same calibre of candidates in the south east, if they’re no longer tied to that then I don’t know why they’d continue to do so.

I'm sure I read that London salaries only equate to an extra 1% once you factor in the increased living costs so I think it will defo push people to move further out. Particularly young people who face extortionate rents & high mortgages if they do buy.

It depends entirely on the type of work. Some will move overseas but many won't.

I work in the charity sector, and whilst a small number of roles could in theory go overseas, the vast majority can't and won't. However I do expect many roles to move to wfh at least part of the time.

My own workplace is giving the choice to those who are wfh.

50% of the jobs can't wfh anyway and are furloughed until such times as we are allowed to operate again.

To add

I actually think wfh is an equalizer. No longer will people be required to go to London or other major cities for senior or better paying jobs.

It has the potential to make the job market and career paths far more interesting and can give people a better quality of life not having to live in big cities or undertake long commutes.

It also causes a divide between people who can and can't work from home.
I am all for flexible working but wfh entirely will have many negative knock on effects for other industries which rely on commuters and high street footfall.
I also don't agree that it is as productive as it would be face to face/in the office. In some lines of work maybe but for those more customer service based, it doesn't work as well. I know someone will come on to say different but that's just my view.

People who can wfh on a high salary with complete job security have been very lucky throughout this pandemic.

In my experience remote working wouldn’t have been so successful if we hadn’t already had a good team relationship beforehand that had been built up through years of working together in the office. I imagine that’s the case for many organisations and expect it would be difficult to build a remote team from scratch.

I agree with this ^
I mean, yes, you can pull together 6,8,10 confident, skilled individuals into a Team remotely, who all have their own part to play and whoa are all used to the world of work, but I think that is very different from taking on a new "junior" in most roles. Checking something quickly with the person next to you or opposite you or asking them something when you are stood by the kettle or at lunch, is a lot easier than deciding if it is important enough to disturb them with another phone call or e-mail or Teams call or whatever you use.

Indeed, young people generally. A couple of years ago a young graduate I was chatting to had landed what should have been quite a good role within her field, was being sponsored through studying for her chartership etc., but, within a few months, she was looking for a new job, as if was just so 'flat' working in an environment with 1x60 yr old gentleman, 1x 58 yr old gentleman and 1 lady also in her 60s.

I think as parents, and certainly, for me, as I've got older, I much prefer the advantages to be able to do quite a bit of the week at home BUT in my 20s I needed to be moving around and mingling with people - just chatting and living life a bit more socially.

I can wfh about 70% of the time but my job - like many others - depends on actually being somewhere and physically looking at the thing my job involves. I can do the admin at home but not the actual professional expertise bit.

Plus there will be some customers who need to see an actual person.

I company have hired new staff based out of the uk recently, and we are going to make uk based post redundant and hire many many more new staff overseas

It's already been happening for a long time. I doubt working from home will change any of it.